[phire]

Yes, though you can engineer reentry too.

For example, the space shuttle uses it's wings (and body) to generate quite a bit of lift and spread the reentry over a much longer period. the g-forces during re-entry. It's 10min at 1.7g.

Though that's from LEO. Apollo came in directly from the moon at a much higher velocity, resulting in ~7g; For the Apollo missions that never left earth orbit, reentry was more like 3.5g.

A space ship aiming to carry untrained passengers will pick designs and mission profiles that are within their passengers abilities to withstand for both launch and reentry. Apollo picked a design and mission profiles with 7g reentry acceleration because they knew their trained astronauts could withstand it.

As for abort.. it's only limited spikes of high-g you only need it to be survivable for the passengers, while the pilots need to be able to control it.

[prox]

Starship does kinda do a shuttle wing entry right?

[phire]

Yeah, it has some lift. Not as much as the space shuttle, but more than apollo.

I couldn't find published numbers for reentry.

I know it hits 2.5g for a second during the final flip maneuver, I suspect they have engineered it to hit about the same during reentry.

[prox]

Cool stuff!